Semiconductor memory is widely used in various electronic devices such as cellular telephones, digital cameras, personal digital assistants, medical electronics, mobile computing devices, servers and non-mobile computing devices. Semiconductor memory may comprise non-volatile memory or volatile memory. A non-volatile memory allows information to be stored and retained even when the non-volatile memory is not connected to a source of power (e.g., a battery). Examples of non-volatile memory include flash memory (e.g., NAND-type and NOR-type flash memory) and Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM).
A charge-trapping material can be used in non-volatile memory devices to store a charge which represents a data state. The charge-trapping material can be arranged vertically in a three-dimensional (3D) stacked memory structure. One example of a 3D memory structure is the Bit Cost Scalable (BiCS) architecture which comprises a stack of alternating conductive and dielectric layers. A memory hole is formed in the stack and a vertical NAND string is then formed by filling the memory hole with materials including a charge-trapping layer to create a vertical column of memory cells. Each memory cell can store one or more bits of data.
Memory systems can be used to store data provided by a host device or other entity. The data can then be read back and provided in response to read requests. To reduce latency in responding to read requests, it is desired to improve performance of the read processes performed by the memory system.